Iran: grim choices for president

Which candidate will
be in a better position to weaken the Supreme Leader? Which will be less
detrimental in terms of economic mismanagement? And which candidate less
dangerous than the others in terms of brazen violations of human rights and
civil liberties?

The mass uprising
after the electoral coup of 2009, which came to be known as the Green Movement,
involved a wide-ranging array of secular, left, liberal, and moderate religious
elements. It was defeated mainly because of the unbelievably brutal suppression
of the activists, which included killing, maiming, and raping arrested
protesters. But the movement’s leadership also played a role. Mir Hossein
Mousavi and Mehdi Karoobi were both establishment figures; while they sought
reforms, they did not want to challenge the regime in its totality. And the
fact that the members of street movements failed to link up with workers and
employees who had the power to shut down factories and other institutions as
they had done during the Iranian Revolution of 1979, also contributed to this
failure.

The situation is much
worse for the democratic forces in Iran for this round of presidential
elections than was the case in 2009. This is true despite the fact that the
ruling cliques’ infighting has reached an unprecedented level, and different
groups of the “Principlists”
(ultra-right religious fundamentalists) who were united against the Islamist
reformists during the last elections, are now openly fighting each other. The
leadership hopes to prevent the election of any candidate that would not be
loyal and subservient to the Supreme Leader. The manipulation of the electoral
process in the Islamic Republic is now a long-standing tradition that takes
place in two stages. Firstly, candidates must be approved by the twelve member
Guardianship Council (appointed by the Supreme Leader). Secondly, when the
electoral process starts, they mobilize a sophisticated machinery to ensure
their favoured candidates’ emerge as victors when the polls close, either by
actual or fabricated votes.

Currently, both
Islamist reformist candidates of the last presidential elections, Moussavi and
Karroobi, are still under house arrest, so different groups of Islamist
reformists have tried to convince Khatami or Rafsanjani, both former
presidents, to run. Khatami declined in favour of Rafsanjani, who declared that
he will run provided the Supreme Leader agrees. The Supreme Leader and the
gangs around him are adamantly opposed to Rafsanjani, but had to reconsider
because of what happened with Ahmadinejad’s camp.

Ahmadinejad, a
Principlist himself, was a true obedient servant of the Supreme Leader in his
first presidency and during the early part of his second, owing to his rigged
election victory and the Supreme Leader’s sanctioning of the results. Since
then, Ahmadinejad has increasingly distanced himself from the Supreme Leader,
and has even brazenly confronted him on several occasions. Ahmadinejad had his
own preferred candidate: his Chief of Staff, and his son’s father-in law,
Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. In the last day of registration in an unprecedented
move, Ahmadinejad accompanied him to the Interior Ministry for registration as
a candidate. Ahmadinejad evidently hoped that if one of his own takes office,
this will allow the former president to remain in situ and influential for four
years, at which point he can then reclaim the presidency a la President Putin.
All the other Principlists and the Supreme Leader himself are against
Ahmadinejad’s plan.

According to an
interview with one of Rafsanjani’s confidants, on the afternoon of the same day
that Mashaei registered, Rafsanjani, despite continued pressure from his
supporters to nominate himself, ordered a communiqué explaining his decision
not to run. Later that same afternoon, he, along with his entourage, rushed to
the Ministry of the Interior with only a few minutes remaining for
registration, having received a positive message from the Supreme Leader’s
office regarding his candidacy.

The situation had
become very complicated for the Supreme Leader. He was facing serious dilemmas:
the Guardianship Council could not easily refuse the candidacy of Rafsanjani,
the most senior figure and symbol of the post-revolutionary period. But
rejecting Mashaei’s candidacy, despite Ahmadinejad’s threating against this, would
be easier. This, however, would make Rafsanjani a stronger contender. The
leadership had to choose either one side, or allow both sides – which are each other’s
archenemies – to run, in the hope that they would severely weaken each other
during the three week long campaign. (Needless to say, non-religious secular
candidates have never been allowed to run for any office in the post-revolutionary
period.) In the end they came up with the drastic decision of eliminating both,
fearing that the vast number of disgruntled Iranians would strategically vote
for Rafsanjani and force the regime to resort to yet another electoral coup
like last time.

To eliminate all the
major undesirable contenders for the presidency, the Supreme Leader had to rely
more on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. He therefore had to support one of
their military/security candidates, such as Mohamad Bagher Ghalibaf who is also
the Mayor of Tehran, or Mohsen Rezaie the former commander of the Guards, or a
civilian Principlist candidate that is accepted by them, like Saeed Jalili,
presently the chief negotiator in nuclear disputes and the Supreme Leader’s
representative in the National Security Council, or Ali-akbar Velayati, former
foreign minister and present head of international affairs in the office of the
Supreme Leader. In the end the Guardianship Council ratified eight candidates,
the four above-mentioned plus another staunch Principlist, Haddad Adel, a top
advisor of the Supreme Leader and a member of the parliament. To pretend that
the election is not limited to the Principlist candidates, they also ratified
three lower profiled Muslim Reformists. Although still there is a possibility
of strategic voting in favour of one these three, it seems to be easier for the
regime to bring out its own favoured candidate from the ballot boxes.

The key questions on
the minds of the Iranians who want to vote strategically are: which candidate
will be in a better position to possibly weaken the Supreme Leader? Which will
be less detrimental in terms of economic mismanagement? And more importantly,
which candidate will be less dangerous than the others in terms of brazen
violations of human rights and civil liberties?

An intriguing aspect
of the current presidential elections is that many of the original candidates were
involved in cases being heard in the courts of foreign countries. These cases
are considering the direct involvement of these individuals in the
assassinations of Iranian dissidents abroad, and in terrorist activities. The
early assassinations or “chain-killings” of Iranian dissidents inside and
outside the country are well known, as is the Mykonos
Restaurant assassination in 1992 in
Berlin, when the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran and his aides
were assassinated. A German court has issued an international arrest warrant
for the then Minister of Intelligence, Ali Falahian. The warrant declares that
he organized the Berlin plot by direct order of the top leadership of the
Islamic Republic of Iran. The killings were ordered by a special council
consisting of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, former Foreign Minister
Ali-Akbar Velayati, and Ali Falahian, all three of whom were among the present
presidential candidates.

Another candidate,
Mohamad Bagher Ghalibaf, was secretly taped in a recent closed meeting, and the
footage was leaked to
Iranian websites. In the audio tape,
he brags about the brutal tactics he used to suppress the student movement when
he was the Police Commander. He also proudly reminds his audience that as a
commander of the air force of the Islamic Guard, he was the person who picked
up a club and jumped on the back of a motorcycle and started “cleaning up” the
streets of protesters. He also masterminded the creation of the Kahrizak
detention center, where where many of those arrested following the 2009
protests against rigged presidential elections were brutally tortured and
raped. It is from among these and other candidates that Iranian voters have to
choose their next leader.

Meanwhile the regime
is preparing for a major crackdown to suppress any sort of protests around the
elections, including the imposition of stricter controls over the media. The
Cultural Deputy of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) has been
appointed as the head of the Fars News Agency, and a notorious interrogator of
the 2009 prisoners has been
appointed as the head of the University Basij
which controls student movements. Islamic Basij (militia), regular police, and
if needed, the Islamic Guards, along with multi-functional neighbourhood
mosques that use the “rent-a-mob” strategy – keeping thugs equipped with
motorcycles and cell-phones on standby – will be ready to crush any actions to
protest the results.

Unfortunately, the
Iranian opposition both inside and outside Iran cannot respond with a similarly
cohesive effort, as they remain divided and incapable of forming a united front
against the regime. The “liberal versus left” and “secular versus religious” divides
are deep rooted, which is another point of advantage for the regime.

As for relations with
the west, particularly with the United States, already there are rumours that
serious secret negotiations between the representatives of the Supreme Leader and
the Americans are under way. Obama mentioned earlier that he is prepared to
negotiate directly with Iran if the Supreme Leader is involved. One reason that
the Principlists so boldly eliminated other candidates who favoured
rapprochement with the west might be that they are doing it themselves. If they
come up with some sort of agreement on the nuclear issue and on Syria, they
know that they will be in a better position to deal with internal issues, extending
their suppression of the Iranian people.

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